Sawadee

Today has been a sensation of tastes for our mouths and tummies. We took a 1 day Thai cookery course with Baan Thai (means Thai House) to learn how to prepare and cook Thai food.

As with any good food you start at the beginning which means visiting the market to get ingredients and supplies for the days cooking. Off we went with our baskets, we spent an hour looking around the market touching and feeling the produce and having a good sniff at things.

Kim our instructor explained all the different rice and noodles and all the different herbs and vegetables that we would be using, the market had a real hustle bustle feel and everybody was there for the same reason to get their fresh produce for the day.

Once we had fully laden baskets we headed back to the cookery school to get started. First job was to get kitted out with a head scarf and apron (see picture!!) then try some of the fruits we had bought before we could start to prepare our first dish of the day. We had dragonfruit, wax apple, tamarind, sticky rice with banana, I think this got our energy levels up for the graft ahead it was all washed down with green tea.

Dish 1- Phad Thai a classic Thai dish with noodles and chicken with egg, garnished with peanuts and chilli then the best bit EAT IT!!!!

Dishes 2 & 3- Tom Yam Soup and deep fried Catfish salad this dish took a lot more preparation and again we cooked it all in the wok. The Tom Yam has chilli, lime leaves, prawns, lemongrass, onion, galangal garlic (they have garlic in everything!!!) and red chilli paste in oil and tomato plus fish sauce and oyster mushrooms. Again cook it all up and EAT IT!!!!

Dish 4- Thai green curry with chicken, this dish is the real ballbreaker as you have to make the paste from scratch using a pestle and mortar, it takes about 25 minutes to pound it down and is real hard work , no jar sauces here!!!

Once the paste was made you fry off the garlic add chicken and a little coconut milk to the curry paste then add eggplant and baby corn plus fish sauce and sugar decorate in the bowl with red chillies and EAT IT!!!

The day was drawing to a close but we still had dessert to squeeze in and this was sticky rice with mango and yellow peanuts bloomin delicious it was at this point Mel had to open the top button on her trousers!!!!

The whole day has been fantastic and we learned so much, a big thanks to Kim our teacher check out Baan Thai online in about a week for some shots of us.I have put some onto the blog also so check them out too.

I am off now to put on my elasticated waist pants to let some tension off my bulging belly.

See you tomorrow after our elephant trek and bamboo rafting. Stay Tuned.

Lots of Love

M & M